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"I am fascinated by the evolution of language, and how local versions diverge to become dialects like Cornish English and Geordie and then imperceptibly diverge further to become mutually unintelligible but obviously related languages like German and Dutch. The analogy to genetic evolution is close enough to be illuminating and misleading at the same time. When populations diverge to become species, the time of separation is defined as the moment when they can no longer interbreed. I suggest that two dialects should be deemed to reach the status of separate languages when they have diverged to an analogously critical point: the point where, if a native speaker of one attempts to speak the other it is taken as a compliment rather than as an insult."
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"It is proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way."
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Personal Development
"The music we listen to may not define who we are. But it's a damn good start."
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Personal Development
"....And above all, it is your civilization, it is you. However much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for any length of time."
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Personal Development
"A people that doesn't live at the center of the world, as defined and described by its poets and storytellers, is in a bad way. The center of the world is where you live fully, where you know how things are done, how things are done rightly, done well."
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Personal Development
"In Russia you learn patience," said Ivan. "In America you learn action."
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Personal Development
"The problem with our culture is we cling to so many different truths. Yet, the truths that we cling to also depend on our point of view. Maybe, the journey to a truth that can be free of hatred, bias and injustice requires a journey of the soul to see all view points."
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Personal Development
"Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure.Ours is an entertainment seeking-nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one....This is the cause of that great sad American stereotype- the overstressed executive who goes on vacation, but who cannot relax."
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Personal Development
"Off this fucking predictable soap opera, this will happen now, then that, then that and you say that you are christian and you start watching series of Turkey people which believe in a very different god so far god of hell - Allah..."
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Personal Development
"From imperial, economic and ideological causes, many cultures are the inheritors, and hence the prisoners, of attitudes of scorn and disdain for other faiths " outlooks which are not ennobling to anyone."
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Personal Development
"I figured this guy was a fair dinkum Australian. The type of guy that worked the land all day, cracked open a beer or two at night and called girls 'sheilas'."
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Personal Development
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"It has become almost a cliche to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics."
Science
"One of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all."
Religion
"A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory."
Religion
"Isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?"
Thought
"Personally, I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world chess championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility."
Winning
"But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience."
Experience
"God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture."
God
"If the second dinosaur to the left of the tall cycad tree had not happened to sneeze and thereby fail to catch the tiny, shrew-like ancestor of all the mammals, we should none of us be here."
Science
"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
Religion
"The fact that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of something does not put existence and non-existence on an even footing."
Philosophy
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